Role Of Emotion In Architecture

Experiencing emotions in Architecture

“Almost everyone except the psychologist knows what an emotion is.” YOUNG, P.T. (1973) Feeling and emotion

Emotion is, in everyday speech, a person 's state of feeling in the sense of an affect. Emotions are complex. According to some theories, they are a state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence our behaviour. The physiology of emotion is closely linked to arousal of the nervous system with various states and strengths of arousal relating, apparently, to particular emotions. Emotion is also linked to behavioural tendency.

There seems to be no empirical solution to the debate on which manifestation is sufficient or necessary to define emotions. At present, the psychologists’

I remember the sound of the gravel under my feet, the soft gleam of the waxed oak staircase, I can hear the heavy front door closing behind me as I walk along the dark corridor and enter the kitchen, the only really brightly lit room in the house.

Memories like these contain the deepest architectural experience that I know. They are the reservoirs of the architectural atmospheres and images which I explore in my work as an architect.”

– ZUMTHOR, P. (2005) Thinking Architecture

From the layout of shopping malls to digital rights management, our everyday lives are full of examples of products, systems and environments which have been designed to shape, guide, control, influence our behaviour, using a wide range of techniques: technological, physical or psychological.

Sometimes the behaviour-shaping is helpful to the user; sometimes it’s serving someone else against the user’s best interests. Sometimes it’s trying to get the user to do something; sometimes it’s trying to stop the user doing something.

The common factor to all of this is intent on the part of the designer/engineer/planner or his or her corporate/political masters. This is a strategic design that’s intended to influence or result in certain user

Often this element of control is harder to distinguish and can even be overlooked by the public. The most common example would be the use of particular colours to influence the mood of the user. For instance, pink is known to have a calming effect, and for this reason is often used within prison facilities to control the mood of the inmates. Similarly, stadiums have been known to paint the locker rooms of the opponents in shades of pink to keep players in a more passive and less energetic state. Users are often unaware of the psychological effects of the surrounding architecture, and for this reason, are often very successful at shaping user